Food for Thought: Direction of Black Comedy

I found myself watching a Showtime Special called "Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy" interviewing Black comedians, of different genders, ages, styles, etc., talking to them about the evolution of Black Comedy and it's portrayal of our society.This intrigued me because I like comedy but furthermore I have strong opinions on how Black comedians present themselves. There are comedians who tackle race and societal issues in an intelligent way that is still hilarious; others simply sling coonery (or niggerdom as I like to call it) onto society that reinforces every negative stereotype that Black people have been working to rid themselves of. It's easy to watch comedy from the Jim Crow days and weep at how Black entertainers had to demean themselves to make "The Man" happy by portraying Blacks on their terms. But upon watchin this special I gained more respect for their ambition within the confines of their time. In the '20s and '30s, a character called "Stepin Fetchit" (pictured beside cartoon version) became popular to white America playing an illiterate and infantile but charming Black servant who was too happy to "tap dance for whitey" on the screen. He even took this persona off the stage and that was how white people perceived him. But in actually, he had two phones in his home. The one to the studio would be answered by the character "Stepin Fetchit" dumb and happy nigger the white people knew and loved. His personal phone was answered by the man, actor Lincoln Perry, an educated Black man who wrote for a prominent newspaper and realized that he could parlay "tap dancing for whitey" into secretly grasping a whole lot more money and power that the white man would ever allow him to have. Lincoln Perry used Stepin Fetchit to become the first Black millionaire entertainer and to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In the black face and minstrel show era, Amos 'n' Andy carried a story of minstrel-show style characters onto television. The show was seen as so demeaning to Black people that the NAACP eventually got it shut down. What the NAACP didn't realize that was that no matter the content, this was the first Black sitcom and despite the images, the show broke down another wall for our people. Dick Gregory (pictured left) followed up by satirizing race issues in a way that penetrated white audiences while educating them. He was a political activist who could take his cause straight into the whitest of audiences and all they could do was laugh and pay him handsomely. Next came Redd Foxx, pushing the envelope on Gregory-style satire with even more shocking material. Bill Cosby appeared with the ability to tell stories about anything that won the world over. He gained so much power that he made "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World," the first shows to put educated and successful Black families on mainstream prime time television. Then came the one and only Richard Pryor (pictured with American flag), widely known by blacks and whites as the greatest and most influential stand-up comedian to ever live, "the freest Black man America has ever had" according to Dr. Cornell West. His experience-based social commentary broke every mold and status restriction; comedians before him worked to be successful within the conflicts of their time and chipped away at the door holding us from artistic freedom. Pryor kicked that door down. Next, although he didn't have the societal and political content of Pryor, Eddie Murphy (pictured with Pryor and Redd Foxx) took that same raw, in-your face boldness from the stand-up stage onto the big screen in the '80s. At this point, Whoopi Goldberg was breaking down barriers for Black women who could be respected for their comedy without having to oversexualize or water down their issues. Chris Rock (pictured below) followed with an added educational and intellectual spin that made him a hit; a mold Dave Chappelle and others would follow. In 1987, Richard Pryor, tired of being pigeon-holed into negative movie roles, made a movie called "Hollywood Shuffle" satirizing how the industry still tried to force Blacks to play nothing but pimps, gangsters, and bums on the big screen. This slowly opened up more opportunity as it put these issues out for the world to see. With "In Living Color," The Wayans Brothers showed the world that a Black run show with a diverse cast of comedians could take over the airways. So this history is what has opened the door for today's Black comedians to be respected and valued side-by-side with white entertainers on the stand-up stage and the big screen. Despite its rocky beginnings, its a world history of steady progress. Some modern comedians are doing this history justice and adding their own history; however, unfortunately, we have many that are sending us in the wrong direction instead. For every Chappelle, Rock, or D.L. Hughley (who even got a comedy talk show on CNN) who have intelligentsia mixed into their routines, we have 5 up and comers trying to make a name by feeding into the minstrel-style ignorance that some of White America still longs to see from Black entertainers. That's why it's so hard to get funding for quality Black movies, it's much easier to get the studio to pay for some movie making Blacks look like buffoons. I understand incorporating a little bit of that buffoonery as bait mixed in with your greater content; but too many now have no real content to follow. Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" is a satire displaying Hollywood's perpetual longing for watermelon-eating, dancing & singing, jigaboo-style Black entertainment and showed how successful a Black man could be if he sold his soul for the money and made such offensively racist garbage. Its horrifying to think that such over-the-top satire could be fairly accurate but it is on some level. As many people have spoken about (including an uncharacteristically enthusiastic and blunt Bill Cosby in 2004), history deserves more; the aforementioned ground-breakers from the past deserve more from today's entertainers just as the civil rights activists and leaders deserve more from today's Black communities. In the first half of the century, Stepin Fetchit and minstrel show era comedians "tap danced for whitey" becuz they had no choices; they excelled at taking those lemons and making lemonade. What excuse do the entertainers have now? Dave Chappelle (pictured on "Inside the Actor's Studio) walked away from a contract worth up to $50 million becuz the studios were taking away much of his creative freedoms and minstrel-ize him (figuratively, and literally as he walked away from a skit that featured him as a pixie in blackface, to which he felt was too demeaning to complete). Despite all that money, his integrity led him to decide that he couldn't be a party to the new less-political and more buffoonish direction the brass was trying to send his show in. Today's Black comedians should take a lesson from Mr. Chappelle and consider than your integrity is more important than the money. A wise man once said "it's awful hard to shave if I can't bear to look myself in the mirror." So comedy needs to find a way to keep our race progressing and most importantly, put out a product that allows us to have our heads held high; not something that makes us look like big-lipped monkeys for the world. Food for Thought...

Religion: Controversial but Needs To Be Said

This comes on the wheels of watching Bill Maher's documentary "Religulous" in which he spends hours at different places around the world trying to prove that religion doesn't exist and people who believe in any higher being are idiots. For anyone who doesn't know, Bill Maher specializes in trying to prove that he's the smartest man in the world who knows everything and enjoys making groups of people look stupid. So I watched the documentary really just to see how he came at the subject. Although I disagree with him in general, some of his points I agreed with and they prompted me to sort out my interesting and controversial views on religion. I consider myself more spiritual than actually religious for a few different reasons. But Maher went way overboard in his total condemnation of all religion and faith as a whole. I know somebody's not gonna like me for some of the things I may say, but we've been thru that before.

• The Bible isn't a history book and shouldn't be treated as such. Maher and anyone else who dismisses religion as childhood fantasy automatically argues that the Bible makes no sense in a historical and scientific context. This is an easy way of getting religious people tongue-tied becuz they can't explain it. However, modern science has only been around for about 400-500 years and the Bible chronicles events much older, written by non-scientific minds. And most importantly (pay attention, this is most important), the Bible should be taken for its lessons and concepts rather than scrutinized for its minute details and scientific inaccuracies. I can't explain the details of virgin birth to you, that's the point, it's a divine process. I'll be perfectly honest although it sounds blasphemous to religious purists, I'm not sure everything in the Bible happened, or happened just as it was said to have happened. Had I picked up the Bible like a history book and read it, I would have called it bullshit too. But that's not how I think about it. That doesn't take away from my comprehension of the events and very valuable lessons offered by the book.
• Core religious beliefs are unshakable once a person devotes his/herself to them; This is a gift and a curse. Unfortunately, text is not as concrete as it seems in the minds of different people. Someone will say or live by something completely ridiculous and you can not change their minds because "it's my religious belief." These differences in interpretations led to fundamentalists justifying terrorism despite most all major religions advocating peace and condemning violence. But no matter how warped they've construed the text, when they say that's their belief you might as well stop arguing because you're not going to change their minds. People like to paint Islam as this religion of crazies that all have their minds set on jihad; that's not true. The extremists of Islam, as with every major religion, construe the text how they'd like to and convince followers that they're obligated to kill anyone who doesn't pledge allegiance to their religion. No one Christianity advocated violence, but the Great Crusades were wars waged throughout Europe in the name of the Christian faith. Others use religion as a means for extorting people's money for personal gain - some evangelists or mega-church preachers - despite most major religions frowning upon the collection of material wealth. But moral faith that religion provides can be a great gift to mankind also...
• I fundamentally believe that people need to have faith. What makes the concept of karma - the golden rule - work for people? What seems to save people from losing themselves when something very bad happens in their lives? What consistently has rescued people who have gone completely off-track with their lives? Faith. In each of these cases, people benefited from having something to believe in. If u don't have it, there would be no motivation to live ur life better or act morally at all. People deserve to have their faiths rewarded and any religious person has stories of this nature reflecting how their faith has come through for them or others around them that they know. There's a woman who used to be on my school's track team who was diagnosed with cancer, had to get her knee joint replaces due to the damage, and had to go through chemotherapy. However, during this entire process she was upbeat and cheerful to the point where I felt bad, even felt selfish, complaining about schoolwork , pain from practice, or anything else going on in my life. Her faith gave her an aura that was so motivational to me and everyone who knew her. She was on the brink of needing amputation but she was never sad because of her overwhelming faith that she would pull through and be alright. And now she is living a great life with her own business. I personally see something like that and can't see how ANYONE can say that faith is pointless.

So for those who don't believe in faith and religion, keep that to urself, don't bring it to me. I've seen enough that I believe that the hope and karma that makes mankind pleasant is heavily dependent on faith. The faith that living a good life and doing the right things will pay off for you in the future and vice versa. I think anyone, no matter their intentions, should be careful when doing something that may shake that balance. And for the overly religious crowd - that crowd who tries to break up a marriage if the couple lived 2gether before marriage, those who alienate homosexuals or other groups despite their faith, etc - u may not like what I said about the validity of the events chronicles in the Bible. But u'll get over it. I may be blasphemous in ur eyes, but I assure u, I've Been Called Worse...